Currently, architectures for remote data acquisition applications are either based on proprietary communication protocols or infrastructures, or both. In many cases, custom hardware is developed to acquire the data and send it to the server application. This has four important disadvantages:                1. Proprietary protocols require extensive development and testing, both on the client and server end.        2. Proprietary infrastructures are expensive in terms of development, implementation and maintenance, and often require great effort in achieving general acceptance.        3. Long-distance data transfer is either impossible, or requires conversion to other communication protocols (e.g. Public Switched Telephone Network).        4. Custom hardware implementations require extensive development and testing, and offers little reuse possibilities.        
The first and second item make development of remote data acquisition applications unnecessary expensive, and both may imply a great development risk.
The third item makes developing applications which collect data from scattered locations in large areas (e.g. the global inventory or sales sites of a company) extremely difficult, and expensive.
The fourth item increases the overall development time of the application, and the limited reuse possibility results in additional cost to the application.
Methods for transferring collected data by means of email messages have been described in the art. EP 1,045,549 describes a method for monitoring and management of distributed networks. The performance data is gathered by a designated served in each network, which sends the accumulated performance data to one or more central servers. The central servers together constitute the supervisory system for monitoring and management of the distributed networks.
EP 964,325 describes a method for managing field devices in industrial process systems.
Both above-described methods are based on a gateway architecture. In the method according to EP 1,045,549, for instance, a designated server in the client network assumes the gateway architecture task: it collets the data from the hosts in the client network and transfers the accumulated data to the central server. In the method according to EP 964,325 field devices submit data to a gateway through proprietary or non-Internet protocols. The gateway processes and formats the data and forwards this data to a central server on behalf of the field devices, which stores the received data in a database.
However, the use of a gateway architecture requires extensive development and testing and involves a time-consuming process.
Also, both above-described methods relate to particular fields of application. The method described in EP 1,045,549 is related to the management of distributed networks, while the method described in EP 964,325 is related to the management of field devices in an industrial process system. Neither of the cited documents claims a method for remote acquistion of generic data.
To avoid the difficulties and drawbacks of the prior art methods, it would be desirable to provide a method and apparatus which reduce the time and effort required for the development of remote data acquisition applications. Also, it would be advantageous to provide a method and apparatus, which enable the acquisition of generic data at a remote location, without limitations on the nature of the data or on applications.
The invention provides therefor a method according to claim 1. The apparatus of the invention is given in claim 2. The computer readable medium of the invention is given in claim 3.
Regarding the second aspect of the invention, currently, architectures of TCP/IP protocol stacks for embedded applications are usually based on a model of stacked protocol layers. This model is derived from conventional design concepts used for high-performance processor environments. As such, it is not well suited for embedded applications which are based on processors with limited processing bandwidth and memory resources. The TCP/IP communication architecture of the present invention provides a modular and scalable concept for the development of embedded systems with Internet connectivity.
Regarding the third aspect of the invention, currently, configuration interfaces for embedded applications are generally developed on a per-application basis. Because developing and testing the underlying communication is a time-consuming task, it increases the development risk. The serial communication architecture of the present invention allows development times of configuration interfaces, which are significantly shortened.
Regarding the fourth aspect of the invention, currently, management of remote systems from a central location is usually implemented with custom applications. By making use of the e-mail communication method of the present invention, the same architecture which is used for the remote data acquisition application can be used for management of the client data acquisition apparatus. The client-server nature of such architecture enables the data acquisition client application to communicate directly with the server.
Regarding the fifth aspect of the invention, currently, configuration and management of data acquisition clients from a remote device is usually done with custom hardware, software and protocols. By making use of an embedded HTTP server (web server), the configuration and management interface for access from a remote device can be based on TCP/IP communication and be implemented with a standard HTTP client (web browser), such as Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Regarding the sixth aspect of the invention, currently, the updating of software versions from remote locations is usually performed with proprietary bootloader protocols. By making use of the FTP protocol, the software update can be based on TCP/IP communication and be implemented with any FTP-compliant server.
Regarding the seventh aspect of the invention, currently RS-232-to-TTL signal level conversion is either provided by the embedded system hardware, or through additional external conversion circuitry. By integrating this function in the cable connector, the total product cost and the system complexity can be reduced.